If you use Facebook, you’ve probably noticed an incessant sort of targeted ad popping up in your feed of late, a targeted ad very specific in its targeting. For me, it takes a rather hideous hybrid form: because of my birthplace (Camperdown, a tiny town in the province of Victoria), and my stint of nine years in Tulsa, I get an ad for a t-shirt proudly proclaiming myself an Australian-Oklahoman. The shirt design itself is a terrifying Frankenstein: Australia’s union jack variant crammed into the outline of Oklahoma’s borders. More chilling, though, on further reflection, is the implication of the existence of this ad. No such t-shirt actually exists, of course, but I could conjure it at a moment’s notice with the simple spell of my credit card number. I would then be able to advertise to the world the exclusivity of my existence. Are you Oklahoman, but not an Aussie? Sorry brah, can’t join my club. From Perth, but never set foot in the red dirt state? You’re as useless as tits on a boar hog, you wanker (see, I even SPEAK like an Australian-Oklahoman).
This wearable exclusivity reminds me of another recent phenomenon, courtesy of my friends at Buzzfeed (and its milquetoast knockoffs, which somehow make the original look like The Economist). Buzzfeed listicles have of course been around for millenia (as the Internet reckons time), but recently I’ve noticed an abundance of a particular type of list: “27 Things You’ll ONLY Get If You’re An X”, with x being “grad of a particular middling state school, or someone raised on a farm, or whatever other ultra-niche cateogry”. What’s interesting here is that Buzzfeed seems content to swap out universal clickability for specific, targeted group appeal: your post about Tallahassee memories won’t get many clicks from people at the University of Wisconsin, but you can bet a whole host of FSU grads will be sharing it around with an “I NOW RITE LOL” (trust me, that’s how Seminole alumni type).
It’s a fascinating phenomenon. I’d almost go so far as to call it quasi-gnostic: recognition of belonging tied to “secret knowledge” accessible only by the elect. Of course it’s a shallow, petty gnosticism (aka just gnosticism), one that elicits camaraderie through cheap nostalgia rather than any real shared sense of place. As we increasingly lose our sense of rootedness and place, I expect more and more variants of this hyper-specific boundary setting to pop up in our virtual lives.
While I certainly don’t think this trend is all negative, it does seem to have particular corrosive effects. One I see quite commonly consists of a mindset where all our culture, the things we consume and buy and peruse, have to cater to our immediate, perceived needs. We demand that the mountain of culture come knock on our front door, rather than seek it out ourselves. Thus enters the specter of our current buzzword: relatability. Ira Glass caused a stir on Twitter last week when he badmouthed Shakespeare, in large part for not being “relatable” in his emotions. For many that seemed to encapsulate the boneheadedness of much of modern culture seeking. Rebecca Mead wrote a nice takedown in the New Yorker of this thirst for something close to us. I have some issues with Mead’s analysis (which I will return to in a moment), but she certainly sets up some of the big issues with using relatability as a touchstone for a piece of art’s importance or greatness.
I’ve ceased being amazed that we continue to demand immanence of art at the expense of its transcendence. We live, after all, post-EPL (Eat, Pray, Love) where all our journeying, physical or mental, comes down to “transforming ourselves” and seeing what greatness lies within. Fading ever more quickly is the idea that maybe there is something outside ourselves that can exist in beauty and grandeur that should be adored for its own sake, and not for ours. We don’t seek out other cultures to understand and marvel at them, but rather to acquire tasty comestibles and neat clothing we can incorporate into our lives as a sign of our special brand of cosmopolitanism.
This is true, mutatis mutandis, in the world of film too. The more I read in contemporary film criticism, the more I see critics, even great ones, struggling to slough off their outer skin to enter worlds that are different than their own (I should be clear: this is my struggle, too). This operates in several different ways, one of which being the special brand of consensus that seems to mark much of the field today. Sure, every film has its outliers, whether it’s the people who rebuked The Dark Knight or Armond White’s lonely stand in defense of Jack and Jill. Critic aggregation has made this worse, as the 90% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes can seem like a monolith impossible to scale. Little wonder then that dissenting critics have framed themselves as lone gunslingers, bravely standing up to consensus with only the six-shooter of their clear-eyed, objective reasoning.
That’s the other disturbing trend I see in film criticism, the belief in the bad faith of those who disagree with you. Critics who see things differently than you are not smart enough, not trained enough in film history, too beholden to elitism or populism or whatever. People swell with pride that they avoid all those plebeian super hero movies, while others take equal pride that they are not like those puffed up, fun hating other guys. Thus tribalism increases in the film world as it does in so many others – pride in belonging comes less from the positive qualities of your “group” than in its exclusive nature that keeps the wrong sort out.
A lab case: yesterday Sam Adams, who has the difficult job of tracking the thoughts of other critics (not through number crunching but through actually reading the things they post), put up this article on recent art house smash Boyhood. In the interest of full disclosure – and, yes, shameless self-promotion – I should note that I recently reviewed Boyhood for Books & Culture. I consider it a great film, and a strong contender for the top spot in my year end list of best films (though there’s a lot of ground to cover between now and December, and plenty of exciting upcoming releases). That has been the sentiment of many critics who have seen the film, and that has led those who did not love the film to feel a bit out in the cold. Adams does a good job arguing that film – and film criticism – needs thoughtful dissent, especially in cases of near-unanimous adulation.
Two things worry me about the current debate over Boyhood. One can be found in some of the articles Adams links to in his piece. Certain writers have posited that the reason Boyhood is popular among the criterati is that it appeals on a gut level to a profession that is largely white, male, middle class, and vaguely liberal. That critics embrace Boyhood because it holds up a mirror to their own experiences. I think this is dangerous for several reasons, not least that it is a form of the bad faith argument. I cannot speak for anyone else, but as for myself these charges are simply not true. Yes, I am a white, middle class male (and “vaguely liberal” is as good a way as any to describe my labyrinthine political views). But, honestly, I found myself connecting only on occasion to Mason, the boy Richard Linklater follows through childhood and adolescence. For a variety of reasons, my childhood looked totally different than his. The moments of connection came for me through the ways in which Linklater portrayed the events happening, not the events themselves.
Second, to speak of Boyhood only in terms of relatability (as Mead does in her New Yorker article) sets up false markers around the film. The implication of some of these criticisms is that the film will fall flat for anyone who is not its target audience. “Because I am X, and I did not like the film, it will not appeal to anyone in group X” is the line of “reasoning” here. Why, then, have I seen accolades for the film flying in from all sorts of people, including women and people of color (and conservatives!)? If a film does not work for you, it may very well be because you cannot “connect” to the characters, but you should be honest about the disconnect on your end rather than trying to project onto those that disagree with you.
Equally disheartening in this whole debate, however, has been the response of certain members of the pro-Boyhood camp, who have sprung from the woodwork to shout down dissenters. One of the writers mentioned in Adams’ article, Mark Judge, has been a special target of the pummeling. I read through Judge’s article and did not find it particularly convincing (it’s based around the whole “critics love it because it’s critic-bait” idea), but the level of vitriol directed his way from some critics on Twitter has been astounding. Ironically, they seem to be using the same tactics against him that he deployed against Boyhood, singling him out for dismissal on the grounds of who he is(a conservative Catholic) and his personal commitments.
Maybe if we were more eager to hear from others, rather than shore up our defenses, we would learn more and work together better as critics. From listening and considering the objections of certain critics to the film, I have been able to better understand my position on the film. In particular, some critics have voiced the idea that the film lacks plot, direction, and propulsion. Some have objected to its relative aesthetic simplicity. Though I don’t fully buy these arguments, I see where these criticisms come from, and they have enriched my appreciation for Boyhood. Not that this was an easy task – I’m no saint, and I’m as quick on the draw of a cutting insult for my enemies as the next guy – but I hope I am slowly training myself to go beyond my own limitations, to try to approach culture from a number of angles and value the viewpoints of others. While I like rootedness and sense of place, true versions of these traits enable us better to experience the particularities of others. It’s only the false, skin deep gnosticism of “secret knowledge”, of existing in a place others couldn’t possibly begin to understand, that cuts us off and marks us out.
